Padma Venkatraman (edit name/settings)

Padma Tiruponithura Venkatraman was born in Chennai, a city in southern India. As a young child she developed a keen interest in Mathematics, Sciences and Literature. As a result of the tug-of-war between her passion for the world of numbers and her passion for the world of words, she moved to the United States at the age of nineteen to pursue a graduate degree in oceanography.

She has had varied job experiences as an oceanographer: she was chief scientist on several scientific cruises at the Institute of Meereskunde in Kiel (Germany), a post doctoral researcher at the Whiting School of Engineering at Johns Hopkins University, and conducted research in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. She has also worked as the director and mathematics and science teacher of a school in England. Eventually, however, she decided to cut back on her scientific research and devote more time to writing, which is undoubtedly her first love.

The result was her debut novel, Climbing the Stairs (published by G. P. Putnam’s Sons, Penguin). Set in India in the 1940’s, Climbing the Stairs is the story of Vidya. Vidya’s struggle for personal freedom plays out against the backdrop of World War II and the nonviolent Indian independence movement led by Gandhi.

Padma currently lives in Rhode Island and works part-time as Director of Graduate Diversity Affairs at the University of Rhode Island as well as Adjunct Faculty at the Graduate School of Oceanography. Her second novel, Island’s End, has also been sold to Penguin.